Fish Stick Jesus

The image of Jesus is popping up everywhere — except perhaps where it’s needed most

Jesus in a fish stick. His mother on a grilled cheese sandwich. Christ with his angels on the cross in the shower.

Is this fiction from the mind of a food critic?

A new mass marketing scheme?

Neither.

Increasingly, Jesus, Mary and even the angels in heaven have chosen to forego traditional theophanies, or conventional methods of communication, and have instead revealed themselves in wood splinters, and culinary mistakes.

In November of 2004, Fred Whan, an Ontario man in Kingston, after burning a fish stick at dinner, found, with the help of his son, the face of Jesus on his fish stick. A year later he took it out of the freezer and put it up for auction on eBay.

Earlier that year, Diana Duyser of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, declared she had found an image of the Virgin Mary on her decade-old burnt grilled cheese sandwich. She, too, auctioned it off, selling it to GoldenPalace.com for $28,000. In her eBay ad, she wrote: “I would like all people to know that I do believe that this is the...